Are you fertilizing?

Al

Yup. I use some powder stuff in my watering can about once a week.

Could you be a little more specific?

Al

my bush beans are almost 2" hight with purple flowers on them, they r getting ready to sprout there beans but the leaves are falling off n they are beginning to look like they're starting to die. Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening?

There are lots of possibilities, over-watering being right up at the top of the list. You'd need to provide a little more background info, though.

Soil type
Watering habits
Where you live
Fertilizer? with what? how much?
Recently moved outdoors after starting indoors?

Al

I'm growling pole beans and they were doing great, white flowers are blooming and they're are a few beans. The leaves are starting to turn brown and fall. I am growing them organically, watering them every other day. No fertilizer except some coffee grounds and Epson salt added to the water one I noticed the leaves turning. Can someone help? I need something organic

I live in Riverside,California

First, coffee grounds in containers are a potentially serious problem for a variety of reasons. Second, adding a compound like Epsom salts, presumably for the Mg content, is more likely to result in unwanted nutritional issues rather than cure any ills. For best results, you need a soil you can water to beyond saturation w/o worrying your plants will suffer from excess water retention, and get your plants on a nutritional supplementation program that ensures they're getting ALL the essential nutrients, not one or two on a hit/miss basis. That's very easy to do with a soluble synthetic fertilizer - not so easy to do if you're intent on sticking to an all organic approach.

Al

Any suggestions for an all organic fertilizer? When I was looking up organic fertilization it pulled up coffee and Epson salt

Epsom salts is a chemical compound (MgSO4). Coffee (and tea)
are known for their
toxic alkaloid (caffeine) content and their allelopathic affect on plants as
well as autotoxic (poison to their own seedlings) effects on future
generations. Caffeine interferes with root development by impairing protein
metabolism. This affects activity of an important bio-compound (PPO) and
lignification (the process of becoming woody), crucial steps for root
formation. We
also know that the tannins in both coffee and tea are known allelopaths (growth
inhibitors).

I used one fertilizer that supplies all the essential elements plants normally get from the soil (Foliage-Pro 9-3-6), but it's a soluble synthetic and not a fit for your all organic approach. I respect your desire to remain all organic, but fertilizing efficiently (without over-supplying some nutrients and under-supplying others) is much more difficult, in part because you usually need more than one fertilizer to cover all the bases, and there is no real way to know when the nutrients locked in hydrocarbon chains will become available; this, because you depend on soil microorganisms to free the salts plants use as building blocks - the same salts that are efficiently and precisely supplied by soluble synthetic fertilizers. Unfortunately, changing cultural conditions cause soil organism populations and their activity levels to vary widely in container culture, which has a significant impact on nutrient availability.

Al

I'm having the same issue with beans, after looking around I think I'm over watering. I have lima beans in a container that has a closed bottom reservoir. Leaves turn yellow and fall off. I am trying bark mulch on top of my pots this year and it is working too good. I need to adjust to using a lot less water during hot weeks.

cblueyesx1 If you are still around, try Jobes Organic Fertilizer or try the Alaska Fertilizer (pellets as the liquid makes your garden smell like fish). For my containers I used a mix of the two with "garden lime" all tossed in when I filled the pots with soil and it has worked for 2 yrs now. Could also just go to the store and look at what they have for organic fertilizers. Or you could scrap it all and go with mirical grow, I've always use that for my raised garden bed and except for bone meal, I have never need anything else. My Grandma plants everything with Osmocote fertilizer and bone meal mixed into the soil under where she plants.

Have any of you checked for spider mites? They devastate my green beans. The nice green leaves start looking spotty, speckled, and get more and more pale, and eventually die and crumble. If you have a good (ie 10x) magnifier you can see them on the underside of the leaves. I spray with Safer Soap solution, that kills them but you really have to stay on top of it since if you have a lot of spider mites there will also be many spider mite eggs.

My pole bean plant is also losing a couple yellow leaves. I water it once a day, (it gets up to humid 87 degrees), and the soil has fertilizer in it. No aphids, though.

My leaves just fall off. I plant them in the ground with other vegetables. I also prep the ground with cow manure and growing fertilizer.

I always done this and have plenty of string beans. The past two years I have had the same problem of just the leaves fall off and leaving the stem which is